


Puncture Perfect

by Marashete



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Assassin Bruce Banner, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Eating Disorders, Happy Ending, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Human Experimentation, I Don't Know How To Tag This Properly, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Mutant Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony has OCD, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-03-17 17:46:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3538469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marashete/pseuds/Marashete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Think Bonnie and Clyde. Think explosions. Think heat and sweat and death, and think distance and calculations. Think running. Think dirt between your toes as he's stolen from you. Think that time it all burned through you and you were fucking whole again. Think about ripping them apart for him. Think about when he ripped you apart and brought you back. Think about being good again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Close For Now, but Only Until--

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a hell of a ride. Good luck, and thanks for reading

**(An arrangement of holes in the skin)**

 

Puncture: as near-perfect a word as explode.

A blade punctures ( _especially when you press it to your FUCKING SKIN_ ). Bones puncture ( _especially when you get a kick because you deserve it and it's a rib to your FUCKING lung_ ). Words puncture ( _do what I tell you, boy, do what I fucking tell you, cocksucker!_ )

Puncture doesn't even look like a word, now.

 

Bruce  _(stupid, stupid fucker, you stupid cocksucking waste of breath)_ Banner, seventeen years too old, had his own fair gluttony of punctures in his too-long-too short years ( _because when have you really, truly lived?_ ) 

People had carved enough holes in his flesh, dragged themselves through the meat of him until he, scarred and distrustful, cried and begged, and they released him. It all culminated here, with this plan as sharp as all the words pressed palm-to-throat. 

 

He could taste the metal of it all, the blood and sweat and successful catch-bang when everything fell into place. When everything exploded outward.

 

When he blew all the fuckers up.

 

 

** (Kid gloves aren't thick enough for me) **

 

Tony Stark was a creature of habit. When things were linear and predictable, the crackling bubble of dissonance that vibrated a constant, high-frequency behind his eyes, resolved.

 

Locking the door three times even though he  _knows_ it's locked and not touching things that other people just touched, these were idiosyncrasies, and idiosyncrasies only. 

 

He only used paper that tears right down the side cleanly (and when it doesn't, everything crackles static and he hurts, he hurts, he _hurts_ -)

 

He wakes up every morning at six-AM Eastern Time (and when he has to change his clock for Daylight Savings, he sweats and shakes until the hour turns over again and he can pretend he didn't have to do that), eats exactly a half-cup of Cheerios (dry; liquid measures are too variable), counts his calories, checks off his 'daily-done' list, and heads to school to pretend.

 

Pretending is easy. He was raised on pretends and make-believe, that everything was always, always alright when things were very much not, so lying is near-genetic, natural. 

 

Being freak-levels of smart doesn't help the pretending thing very much, though. Of all his aversions and idiosyncrasies, misinformation most made his skin prickle, and god damn there was a lot of misinformation. 

 

This was the technological age, the age of current currents, the age of smaller, lighter, faster, but more, more, more and he was right in it, absorbing the thrum of it all, of the little creeping spider-threads of electricity he could touch, taste, take. 

 

No one else could; he felt godlike. He felt very, very different. He realized this with an aptly positive-negative juxtaposition of emotion. Different wasn't new, but with everything considered it was still a twisting, lonely feeling. 

 

The first time someone noticed that he was a freak, the electricity crackled with indignance and barked sharp at him behind his eyes, and he believed them. He believed that little nagging echo of his father's voice and absorbed the warning into the core of them.

 

Freaks don't get a place in that space between their mother's arms, or that space tucked under her chin against her chest, listening to her inhale and exhale. To all the brilliant electrical signals of her heart. 

 

He didn't deserve the beautiful things. 


	2. --Only Until We Decide We Need to be Closer

**(Dress me in rubber and call me a duck cause all I can do is sit and wait for you to understand)**

 

How they met was pure happenstance. Bruce watched Tony unlock his locker three times, arrange his books by width, and avoid every line on the floor.

Bruce tongued over the iron of his split lip thoughtfully as Tony forced himself to strut. He could see the bloodshot-whites of Tony's eyes and, as he neared, the reflection of his own fear and anger.

Tony moved like a confident ghost, quick and sure but terribly, terribly frail. Bruce didn't know what he'd not-swallowed to get that way, but apparently it worked; the evidence was in the carefully-crafted bones of Tony's hand, delicate and birdlike as they rolled under his skin.

Bruce had the sudden urge to bruise him, see the soft swell of angry red and purple against the pale of his flesh, but beat it down as Tony passed and tilted his head Bruce's direction. Something primal in him growled. He was a stranger in a green shirt, Oscar the Grouch was frowning in vain over his chest, so he had no right to do that to this boy with doe eyes. But he wanted to, and that was the cusp of it, the catalyst to the plan.

“Lunch?” the unexpected voice was close, low and careful, and he looked up to meet doe-eyes.

“Excuse me?” It came out sharp, a fitting warning of all the disappointingly weak, angry things he was.  
“You heard me. Lunch?”

“Tell me your name and I'll think about it.”

“Tony.”

“Well, Tony, if you could get us out of here, I might be a little bit more amicable to the idea.”

“Amicable.” Tony parroted, “You're wicked unreal, you know that?”

“Wicked?” Bruce countered, arching a brow.

“Whatever. You'd be surprised what I can do. Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere but Taco Bell.”

“I knew I liked you.” Tony said, shifting his feet so they were even on the tiling, “Meet me in the commons at the start of fourth. We'll go somewhere.”

“Somewhere. You're a very vague man, Tony.”

Tony gave him a wry grin with just a hint of eyeteeth, “Says the one who hasn't even told me his name.”

“Bruce.”

“Well, Bruce, Prince of Vague, I was assuming something greasy from the diner on Main Street.”

“Prince of Vague.” Bruce was well aware of his parroting nature the entirety of the conversation, “You're pretty fuckin' unreal yourself.”

“Would you say I'm...” Tony's grin widened, and Bruce thought Cheshire before he could stop himself, “ _Wicked_ unreal?”

“Oh shut the fuck up and get to class.” 

Tony's grin never left his face. Bruce could see it in the apple of his cheek as he turned and strode off, heels and toes missing splits and the transitions from tile to tile as he went.

 

 

** (Sweetheart I could be your Joker, but the Joker's a wildcard and I'm not very fond of Spades) **

 

By far the most interesting thing about talking to Tony was the familiarity. They spoke like old friends. Tony could fire back all the bite and wit Bruce offered, and Tony was clearly more a showoff than Bruce was. He was animated, wide-eyed and gesticulating, and Bruce was fucking  _enraptured_ .

“I mean, you don't just go from 'hey' every once in a while to 'let's get fucked up together' just like that. It's a delicate process.” 

Bruce took a slow sip of his tea, setting it down and looking at Tony with a carefully guarded, analytic expression, “You don't exactly strike me as someone too keen on waiting for things. You're bored by small talk, annoyed by the slow burn. You just want to get to the explosion, the metaphorical Big Bang.”

Tony looked right back at him, unashamed, bringing a fry to his mouth. He spoke and the fry flopped about as he waved his hand, “Duh. I mean, I see you looking at me and I ask you to lunch? I cut to the chase.”

“Seems a bit dangerous, right? I could be a freak that likes to fuck corpses.”

The minute flinch Tony gave was interesting, “As long as it's not my corpse, be the kind of freak you want to be,” Tony said, shaping the word 'freak' with an unreal sharpness, “ but don't invite me to the corpse run. I don't need that. I prefer my bodies warm.”

Bruce tilted his head, “That's what microwaves are for.”

Tony laughed bright and musical, “Fuck, you've thought about this!”

“No, not really. I would have solved the logistical problem of mass versus volume, if I had. You'd have difficulty finding a microwave big enough, or bending limbs, stiff with rigor mortis,” Tony snickered at 'stiff' because he was a _child_ , “into it like you'd need them to.”

Tony wiped at his eyes, “You're fucking surreal. So blasé about corpse-fucking.”

“Would you say I'm... _wicked_ surreal?”

“No,” Tony said, sharp, but he was smiling, “ _Dali_ was wicked surreal. Magritte was wicked surreal. Kahlo was wicked surreal. Bring on an existential question while you thrust into a body you just pulled out of the river of death, and then we'll see.”  
“Did you just use the word thrust out loud?”

Tony rolled his eyes, “You talked about the logistics of warming a corpse to fuck and  _now_ there's an issue with wording?”

Bruce shrugged and finished his tea, watching Tony pick up and set down the same fry, and cut into his rambling.

“Fucking eat that, Tony.”

Tony froze, looking at Bruce with those wide doe-eyes. “What?”

Bruce softened his tone, “That french fry has traveled the distance from the plate to mouth far too many times. Put it out of its misery.”

Tony looked at it and popped it into his mouth and chewed it slowly. Bruce didn't mention the tremble in his fingers as he reached for another fry and ate, chatter momentarily subsiding.

The silence felt sick and heavy.

“I don't fuck corpses,” Bruce offered.

Tony snorted, hand smacking on the table like he'd learned a world-shattering piece of information as he pitched forward into Bruce's space, “Yeah, given! Thanks.”

“I figured you'd need a little clarification.” 

“Yes, _thank_ you, Tell-Tale Heart, I did.”

“Tell-Tale Heart had absolutely nothing to do with corpse fucking.”

“Put on your Freudian lenses and it just might.”

“Fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh shut the fuck up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please hang in there. I know this is dialogue-heavy, and the next chapter will be too, but there's more concrete imagery coming soon, I promise. and Plot!


	3. Tongue-Trapped, Animal-Blind

**(Let's get high on gore and they'll vomit metal)**

 

Wispy bruises graced Bruce's wrists and the base of his neck. Thumbprints pressed dark purple and vibrant green to his throat. Tony didn't ask, just noted Bruce's abnormal silence, and knew.

“Lunch?”

“Not today, Tony.”

“We could at least get out of here—“

“Not _today_ , Tony.” Bruce hadn't meant for that to come across so sharply, but it had, and bringing it back meant cutting himself with it, “So pushy.”

“Right,” Tony's voice came out clipped and soft and Bruce found himself feeling guilty instead. As Tony turned, body tight and angular as always, Bruce caught his shoulder.

“I'm sorry.”

Tony shrugged Bruce's hand off, “You don't owe me anything.”

“No, I don't, but I'm being an asshole.”

“Yeah, kind of,” Tony said, giving a brief smile, “But I'll get over it.”

“Will you?”

“Maybe,” Tony said, grinning now. “But cmon, we should get out of here. We don't have to go get food or something like that. I just don't want to fucking be here.”

“You're fucking determined to get me out of here.” Bruce tilted his head, “Why's that?”

“Because you're the only one I've felt normal around.” Tony said lowly, and the hair on the back of Bruce's neck stood up but he felt no accompanying shiver. “And because I care. And, because that,” he pointed at Bruce's eyes with an accusing finger, “That lack-of-spark, is unacceptable. I don't need to know what happened. I don't care if I don't know. I just want to help.”

Oh, this was a dangerous game. Bruce wanted to bruise him again. Bruce wanted to let him in and trust and sink down into normalcy. But these were not things he thought his fractured body nor his fractured mind could do anymore. Maybe beating the salt for his tears from his body actually fucked worked because all he was now was numb. Numb and fractured.

“Look, I know I'm pushy, okay? I know the last thing you probably need from me is a little push.”

“No it's—you care. It shows. I appreciate it.” Bruce said carefully, and couldn't help but smile at the hopeful light in Tony's eyes. “We can go out, but with the provision that we won't come back. Why skip one period? It's a waste of time.”

“Seconded. I just assumed you didn't want to miss your late classes.”

Bruce rolled his eyes, “Presumption will get you nowhere with me, Stark.”

“And what will?”

 

Bruce's smirk was the only answer.

 

 

**(I want to fuck you right out of your mind)**

 

Bruce rarely looked so unhinged, but it wasn't really his fault. He kept curling and uncurling his fingers, and the muscle in his jaw flexed and flexed under his skin with nearly the same rhythm as the curl-uncurl of his fingers. He was breathing shallowly out of his nose and if Tony were anyone else, he'd be afraid.

“Fuck 'em.” Tony said resolutely, scowling, “ _Fuck them._ ”

“Yeah, that'll fix it.” Bruce said, shaking out his hands and taking a deep breath.

“It might. It also probably would give some truth to them calling you a fag, but a little less bite because you'd know, and everyone else would know, that they're a little faggy themselves.”

“Oh, yeah, helpful solution to the problem, Tony. If only the fucker hadn't punched me in the head! Maybe we could'a had something. Would've been so fucking romantic what with the bruises and internalized homophobia. Mass-media worthy romance right there.”

“Damn straight.”

Bruce looked pointedly at him, “So funny. _So_ funny.”

“You're kind of an asshole.”

“Bingo. Tony gets it.”

Tony watched Bruce's smile grow until he winced, sore, and held his cheek gingerly with a cupped palm.

“Need a little ice, asshole?”

“Preferably, yes.” Bruce said, “But fuck it.”

“See? Fag.”

“I'll make your fucking face match mine if you ever call me that again.”

Tony shrugged, “Right. Because I really mean that.”

“It doesn't matter what the fuck you mean, Tony. Just get me some fucking ice.”

“Yessir,” Tony said, placing his hand over his heart and bowing slight; Bruce uncurled his fists to relieve the ache of his knuckles. He really, really, really couldn't stand the gnawing bubble of anger welling up in his chest. It had played like Tony could make it go away, but it crept at the edges and gurgled out when Tony went away. He should've known not to expect good things. He should've known to expect the monster he hid.

He starteed at the press of cold wetness at his cheek and immediately hissed at the sudden sharp pain that followed it.

“Sorry.” Tony murmured, drawing his hand away as Bruce took control of the ice pack, “Should've warned you.”

“No, its—now that the cold's settling in, it actually feels pretty good.” Water dripped down his chin and spattered Tony's still-lingering hand. He wiped it against his shirt.

“You ever wish you could just—never mind.” He shook his head, “Never mind.”

“Yeah, I do wish.” Bruce said, shifting the ice, “In fact, I wish for things I probably shouldn't.”

“Everyone does.”

 Not everyone dreams of smoke and screaming and blood, blood, blood all over the fucking sidewalk—

“I don't believe that.”

“Everyone operates by their lizard brain sometimes. Humans are animals first, rational creatures second, and good things almost never.” Tony didn't look at him; he picked at his nails and tended his internal monster. These things made him better than Bruce, whose monster didn't even have a cage. “Rational doesn't help when everything is broken. The animal, the organic, is the only perfect failsafe. People who turn off their failsafe haven't taken a very well-calculated risk.”

“People who operate with their animals only are dangerous.” _I'm dangerous. I'm dangerous. Do you know what my eyeteeth are for?_ “People who can use reason can deliberate between two animal paths.”

“And that hesitation is the difference between a white dwarf and a black hole.”

 “I would rather destroy.” _Burn, rage, scream, hurt._

Tony's eyes were sharp like all the rest of him always was. He had nothing, no words for Bruce, because of course he knew.

“I don't want to die, Tony.” All Bruce could do was offer a lie.

“Sometimes, I do.” He could be simultaneously soft and sharp, full of hard angles, but with all the strength and force of lightly-swaying wheat.

“Is that your animal talking?”

“It always is.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be better than doing what I really want to do.” Tony dropped his gaze to cut holes into the flooring. The nurse's office was a small, impersonal thing. There were no self-help brochures big enough for their respective pains. Bruce nodded because he knew, too.

He moved the ice again and watched Tony watch the dirt.

“What about you? What do you want to do?” Tony asked, voice low and thin as corn-silk.

“Be a little more animal.”

 

It was as good an answer as he could give right now, trapped between breathing and honesty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading <3


	4. The Culmination of All the Ugly Things I Am

**(No one could have seen my money coming and they didn't know the arch of your spine could bring me close to it)**

 

Tony had delayed the Plan. Modified the scheduling. Bruce was caught between annoyance and feeling stuck. His plan was a work of visceral art and he needed it done. It frenzied its way through his veins until he thrummed at the very idea of it, hungry for its execution.

But there was Tony. There was Tony and all of his warm smiles so unlike everything frigid he had ever known. There was Tony and all the things that Bruce felt that he didn't have a name for. Terrifying things. Things that had felled armies.

Tony who had washed his hands until they bled because someone in his third period shoved a licked sucker into his hands and undid all of the things the therapist had helped him with. He fired her that night and wept at lunch the next day, falling into a deadened silence that harpooned into Bruce's emotions. He had fishtailed and settled on rage. He always settled on rage.

Watching Tony divide his food into the appropriate amounts (if he'd had a scale it would be out and he would be weighing his food to the fifth digit) for the first time in two weeks renewed the rage. If Tony could be saved from himself, maybe Bruce could too. The problem was _them--_

"Bruce? You're scowling. An impressive, but worrying, scowl." Tony touched his forearm. Apparently, some miracles remained.

"Sorry." Bruce said, but offered nothing by way of explanation.

"You're doing the eerie space-out thing again," Tony explained, sliding a part of his cookie to him. Bruce shouldn't, shouldn't take it, but he does, because Tony pops the other half into his mouth and Bruce would do anything to see him possess more of himself.

"Yeah, that happens sometimes." He couldn't tell Tony the plan. Couldn't risk another party wigging out on him last minute. If he didn't tell Tony, then, though, Tony would mean little more than the rest of the rabble. And perfectly damaged Tony was worth so much more than that.

He was stuck. He was every synonym of 'stuck' and then some. What would Tony do, say, if he was told to stay home on a specific day? Would he listen?  
How would Tony react if Bruce _did_ tell him his Plan?

"You're boring.” Tony said flatly, resting his cheek to his knuckles with an exaggerated sigh. “Come out of the Banner-Brain-Labyrinth and talk to me.”

“Why don't you come up with a topic of conversation instead of pestering me for one?'

“Because I do more than enough talking for the both of us.”

“Oh, believe me, I've noticed.”

Tony flipped him off, and, well, they couldn't have that. Bruce grabbed his hand and twisted his wrist. Tony contorted like a river around a rock, body pitching forward, toward the grip on his hand like it had a gravitational pull that strong.

“Okay! I give, I give.”

Bruce let him go and he rubbed at his bird-bone wrist. Bruce hoped he bruised, hoped he could see the purple bloom of offended blood vessels happen before his eyes, but it did not and he shifted the ice again and laid back.

“Tony?” Bruce prompted tiredly, “I want to ask you something?”

Tony's eyes were lit with something feral and familiar as he said “Yeah?” and Bruce knew everything would be alright.

 

**(Wrist adjectives are hard to come by, these days)**

 

The first time Bruce stayed the night with Tony it was storming. Tony looked positively elated. His eyes were wide and dark and full of this unnameable life Bruce hadn't seen in him before.

But maybe it was the circumstances. Maybe it was the inspiration.

They decided to come up with plans at Bruce's (and that was an experience in split lips and not meeting Tony's gaze through the bruises.) and build at Tony's.

It was Tony who told him, implored him, not to go down with the school building. Self-made destruction didn't need a martyred captain, he'd said. And it was Tony who'd drawn up the shell of the bomb and the remote detonator with slight glee—all of dad's good work blowing up in his face—the consequences of having a sponge for a son and paying him no mind so he was free to absorb to bursting.

Tony, with silver-dollar sized patches of cigarette burned skin on his thighs and arms. Tony, who'd calmed Bruce's rage with a soft “I did that” when he'd seen the scars and scabbing burns.

Tony looked good with solder pinched between nimble, tapered fingers. The knots of his knuckles were surreally apparent under his pale flesh and he held a soldering iron like it'd been his rattle. Smoke coiled up into the air and the room smelled like burnt rubber and something indescribably ashy. It occurred to Bruce that Tony was chemistry equations in action. He wondered what burnt flesh smelled like, wondered if it wasn't the burn Tony needed when he cauterized himself; if it was a reminder of the animal, the destruction that Tony could be; burning flesh was only the beginning of that road.

It was Tony, Bruce concluded, that glimpsed his animal and recognized his own in Bruce, not the other way around.

Tony was as much mess as he was painful organization. The house, though shared, (and Bruce suspected it frequently sat empty, or with one heartbeat inside instead of four) was almost clinically clean. Bookshelves sat in neat rows and guarded interior walls, and their books were alphabetized, all spines outward, titles reading left to right upward if the head was tilted to the left.

There were no dishes in the sink, no pictures on the walls, no flowers bought as gifts for lovers, or from them, no clothes left unfolded or papers on flat surfaces to be read later, set down. This was hell.

Bruce had been touched in violence, but at least he'd been _touched_. Tony radiated touch-starved and his house was as reflective a mirror as his stair-step ribs.

And yet Tony smiled with all the force of the thunderstorm outside when Bruce crossed the threshold. Maybe the concept of positive touch was intoxicating because Bruce smiled too as Tony's hand smoothed the crinkles of the fabric at his shoulder.

“It's almost done.” He murmured, smacking Camel Lights against his palm as he led Bruce around. 

“Give me one of those.” Bruce said, and Tony thumbed one out for him, smirking blithely as he quickly pressed it between his own lips and lit up. Bruce seethed for a moment before he was distracted by the doe-like innocence of Tony's eyes through the curtain of smoke from the cigarette. His eyes were lined with the natural-kohl of thick lashes and youth. He was young, angry, all the animal that Bruce had ever felt inside his own self, and Bruce felt vicious over it all. Possessive at the idea of those eyes looking away. 

This was a problem.

This was a problem because Bruce was not beautiful. He was short and scruffy and plucking the cigarette from Tony's fingers and pulling in; all the burn and anger swirled together in his chest and floated out, up, away. He was ugly, broken, and he was all of the street fight of a stray cat, missing an ear.  
There was only a minute of quiet surprise when Tony slung an arm about his shoulders anyway and captured the smoke between their lips with a kiss. Bruce was animal, leaning into it unswayed, but Tony was just as much easy alley cat as Bruce, with his shoulder hitched with the blows of being too smart, too kind, too, too much. 

So it's not a surprise when Tony betrays him.


	5. Self-Interest is Divine

**(Hold your breath for my punch to your gut)**

 

"You'd have great blowjob hair." Tony said placidly, ruffling Bruce's curls with a wide, warm palm.

"Is that a proposition, Stark?" Bruce asked, completely partial to the idea, disregarding the Stockholm vibe of the whole situation.

"Ask me that when I'm not wiring something that explodes, Banner." Bruce kept a comment about other kinds of explosions tucked behind his teeth, but Tony saw its flavor on his smirk. "That's right, I'm corrupting you."

"Just because your sexuality is defined by the overt doesn't mean my subtlety isn't sexy."

"It's definitely sexy," Tony purred, "So sexy it's a shame I can't do anything about it."

They had a week of faux-normalcy before the date. Tony had been meticulous in everything they'd done, and it showed in the beautiful design of the thing. It was small, for a fucking bomb, unobtrusive and hide-able in a bag. It was convenient and effective. It wasn't some _Anarchist Cookbook_ project.

"Not that you could," Bruce smirked, "I'm saving myself."

"That's not what you said last night." Tony jeered, infinitely the teenage boy that he was.

Bruce snorted and shrugged, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Stark." He'd briefly entertained the idea that Tony legitimately wanted him around, which was the biggest delusion he'd ever thought up for himself. They had no time for romance anyway.

Within the week, they'd be fucking fugitives.

How quaint.

 

**(Revolver)**

The cusp. The smoke. The tension before the explosion. All animals brain knew what was coming (they could smell it, note the change, but everything that was not instinct was an antagonist for instinctual fear) but the sheep could not bleat out the warning before it happened.

They couldn't stop to see the building go up. They had to run, to flee, to become invisible (but wasn't that what he'd always done his whole life? What they'd both done? Whiskey and father made a disastrous, almost inevitable pair). They were somewhere in lower Arkansas, sleeping pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, bags as pillows, blankets coiled protectively around their legs.

Bruce, afraid.

Tony, melting beside him.

Nothing linear but all so familiar, from the sweat and growing hunger and ears straining for danger despite the pretense of sleep. They were just children. He wondered what the media was saying. Tony had refused to switch on the radio to listen on the drive down, and he'd had to abandon the car on the border and hot-wire another. It was nearly out of gas and he didn't want to spend future food money on a stolen piece-of-shit-Camry. They hadn't planned as well as they'd thought.

"Bruce?" Tony whispered, fingers winding into the hem of Bruce's shirt. They looked fucking skeletal, bleached pale by the moonlight."I can hear you thinking."

"I'll think quieter then." He mumbled, not meeting Tony's eyes.

"Not what I meant. Are you okay?"

Well, wasn't that a good question? The spring night was cold and the answer jittered out from between his teeth louder than he intended, "Have I ever been?"

Tony was silent; his dark eyes blinked slow and patient and Bruce's anger was aflame.

"We killed those people, Tony. _Killed_. Permanent. You could at least act like you feel it."

"You realize, Bruce," Tony said, voice low and flintily hoarse, dangerous, "That I built bombs like that for breakfast in dad's workshop? Changed the missile codes and blueprints, and made them more _effective_ \--Bruce, what did you think when you asked me to help? Everyone wants something from me. Always have. What did you want? I was willing to give, but what did you _want_? Did you want them to die? _All_ of them?"

He couldn't speak.

When fire burns, it sucks the oxygen out of the air around it and begins to suffocate itself. He inhaled, felt the danger of suffocation all around him, and answered, "Because I wanted someone who knew what it felt like." He squeezed his eyes shut against Tony's surprise, "The anger. Loneliness. Whatever bitter vindictiveness that crawls under your skin, we share. I saw my tiredness in your eyes; I wish I hadn't."

"Did you want them to die?" Tony repeated.

He opened his eyes and swallowed, "No," it came out pinched and he swallowed again, "I didn't."

Tony nodded once and pulled him closer, "Well, thank god for me, right?"

(Revolver II) They have to run, keep running, and run. Bruce didn't eat that morning. The cafe's TV had Tony's picture on it and he didn't stop to read the running line: TONY STARK: KIDNAPPED OR ACCOMPLICE?

"It was lame." Tony said dismissively. "They aren't looking that hard."

"But once they start?"

"Dad won't waste much money on an embarrassment."

"Maybe you're his _favorite_ embarrassment, Stark." He spat the last name as a reminder.

Tony pursed his lips together and swallowed. Bruce took that as a yes.

"Time to change states?"

"I'm betting it's time to change countries."

 

They made it to New Mexico. Dirt and rattlesnakes. Dry heat. Tony didn't cling to him at night like he used to. Bruce cursed the heat.

 

Tony shifted at the same time someone else did. Bruce should've seen this coming. "Bruce!" Tony whispered, suddenly wide-eyed and alert. They were up, running in moments, and Bruce all but saw the twist of shadows reaching for them. He twisted in turn and avoided, but Tony didn't, couldn't, still sleep-slow and hungry enough for clumsiness. Bruce swore and turned back, cut off by another shadow.

"Tony!" There was no sound save for a choked gurgle, and Bruce felt his stomach drop to his knees. He spun on his heels and ran, cowardly.

 

"Anthony Stark, you've been some damn kind of a nuisance." The man, imposing, smirked down at him with one eye. Tony, exhausted, closed both of his.

"Where's dad?"

"On his way."

"Where is _he_?"

"Who, Stark?"

Tony opened his eyes; the tone sounded like a way out, and the animal part of him jumped at the opportunity.

"Never mind." He mumbled, cowardly


	6. Holding Myself Open for Every Holy Instrument

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very much a WIP and will continue to be edited. Please enjoy, but bear in mind that I put this up to give you guys something to read and to let you know I haven't forgotten this story. Thank you!

(If we had never happened I would still have ended up here)

 

He wakes up. He kisses her cheek. He washes his face, exfoliates, washes again, slicks back his hair with his preferred poison scent and tackles another day in the grease. He doesn’t dream of the boy’s face anymore. He knows better than that, was taught better than that. He still hears his father’s voice but doesn’t pay it any mind. The electricity that flows from his fingers is proof enough of his lackluster breeding.

She wakes up shortly after him, wipes his kiss off her lips, and pretends she is happy with the man she works with-slash-for. She doesn’t notice when he fades out of reality, when he counts every piece of food again, like he used to in high school, when cherry Jell-O was his favorite. She pretends it’s all normal.

 

(Cut holes in the top of the box so it doesn’t suffocate)

 

The next time he sees it, it’s behind a glass wall. It is growling and snarling and lost in all the things it was taught. His eyes track his movements and he thinks, this thing, his thing, is perfect. And then the snarling thing collapses into tightly coiled ferocity; it is soundless, wordless, and analytical. It never stops tracking him. It never stops its pacing. Then, it does, once, and sidles closer to the glass with a fluid motion. It draws its lip over its incisors when it sees him and— without another word for it— _chortles_. Like it’s happy to see him. He almost wants to pet it like a stupid dog, but it doesn’t get affection, and he doesn’t want rabies.

Ross taps the glass, and it launches toward the noise. Its eyes are green, a split second trick of the light. He doesn’t flinch back. It retreats after a few loud moments of snarling, and crouches, watching him.

He smiles. Patient zero.

 

(Contagious is as contagious does)

 

If he’s entirely honest, the snarling was only half-faked. He would be perfectly content to rip that man’s face off. And something deep in him lurches and growls at the thought—as if agreeing. He listens to the warmth and then shoves it away.

Bruce scratches at the floor almost rhythmically. He does this when he feels the eyes on him, the thousand searching eyes. It makes him look fucking insane—something he wouldn’t argue with himself—and they learned. The last time someone made him stop he bit two of their fingers off to the second knuckle. Putting all that pressure his jaw was capable of producing to good use, finally, finally.

They’d fucked him up. Further. Extended the fucked he already had been. Bent him into a thing that was not always entirely himself. Did the rest of the breaking his father had started. Turned that growling spitting thing into reality and brought forth the cool, calm, deadly piece of shit he’d always pretended didn’t exist. When he was younger and edgier, he embraced the cold persona as smoothly as he’d embraced taking steel to his thighs. It was easier to do it than acknowledge that he was really real, really living those broken bones and bruises.

They made him something new. Something entirely unapologetic about its hurts and willing to use the things they’d taught it to make everything burn. They’d made him a killer, and the rest of him that was not a killer hated it. The spaces in his memory were not natural, not there before he’d been taken, and all the things he missed about Tony were faded and distant.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to get out when he was not entirely himself; he decided to continue scratching until he thought of something. His opportunity arose when Ross came in, and told his handler he was active. Active, damn right, he was. And then they dropped him off in the dark, alone, and told him his target. He could camouflage well in the city, blend into the swirling mass, and move with the rest of the ants.

Vanishing was always something he’d done well.


	7. Bury Our Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is fallout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll keep updating this. I have other chapters I'm working on! Thank you so much if you've stuck around through this. I know this chapter is short, but I really appreciate every read, kudo, and comment. <3

_Tony_  
He had ash in his mouth. Thousands of cremated bodies in his lungs, clawing, grating--he couldn't breathe.  
Tony gasped awake. His chest hurt. His fingers were tingling and the buzzing spread to his hand as he sat up. His clock was blank and his light wouldn't turn on when he flicked the switch. The buzzing intensified.  
He didn't belong here.  
He didn't belong here. That was made abundantly clear to him. They forced him to graduate early. MIT beckoned. His father snarled business deals out amidst press conferences about how poisonously lucky he was to have his wonderful (freakish mutant) son back. Complete with bruises he’d left in drunken hazes on Tony’s upper arms, home was just as empty as he remembered.  
He missed Bruce.  
Still called him that, in private, even, he missed him so much. He had to pretend, in public, that the boy never existed. That the months they'd spent running had been spent in fear over what would happen to him. That he'd intentionally disarmed the bomb as a way to undermine Bruce's authority, rather than to save him from the guilt.  
His mistake for getting separated. His mistake for being here and not there. His mistake that Bruce was likely dead.  
He had to suffer alone, as penance.  
Things, for everyone else, could return to normal.

 

 _Ross_  
He wanted Stark, but instead, he'd get Banner. But the boy was slippery; unburdened by Stark, he was freakishly capable of hiding in plain sight. General Thaddeus Ross, however, was on top the food chain, and if there was anything he was good at on the whole god-damned planet, sniffing out the golden goose of a shitty situation was it.  
He had a new project, a revolution for the military’s reach and for its incognito needs, and he'd found just the right cog for the wheel. Building a superweapon needed only one more thing, and the quarry was close, right within his reach. He landed in Peru, relying on tips from locals—scaring them about the dangers of an American capable of building bombs from scratch was the easiest procuring of information he’d performed in his service.  
He wasn’t top of the food chain for nothing, anyway. 

 

 _Bruce_  
Three months. Three months of festering anger and brutal loneliness. Every bone hurt and he was sickly-thin; the willow that was his former companion now seemed so vast. He wasn't allowed to think of him beyond initial bitterness. Now that he was alone, he was determined to stay that way. Bitter. Not angry.  
The last time he'd been in the States, he'd seen Howard Stark gratefully proclaiming the safety of his progeny. He wondered how long it took for him to notice Tony's absence. Tony had looked lost and pale on the screen, dark eyes staring down at the floor, or maybe the press, but his shoulders were straight, broad, the picture-perfect Stark heir otherwise. The threat of Howard’s hand draped, tense and claw-like even in its forced, press-ready relaxedness, over Tony’s shoulder probably half the reason Tony could stand to hear Bruce’s name. He slipped over the border into Central America that night, full of heartbreak that burned in his throat.  
He sees the seashells on a beach in southern Peru and thinks, yes, this is the perfect place to lay down and die. He spends the last valuable morsels of his energy searching for the perfect shell. The outer part of the shell is rippled and pale pink, but when he turns it over it is the color of raw salmon and smooth, like the sweep of Tony’s tongue over his lips.  
He curls up on the sand with it clutched in his hands and closes his eyes.


	8. Posed to Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaack~
> 
> There are mentions of death and cancer in this chapter. Once past the Tony section those references are past.

_Tony_

Tony’s mother is dying violently. She chokes on her own lungs, her own tumors, and he sees her sightless eyes lose the light he loved so much. His dad fucks the nurse after the third press release about her illness, before she is truly gone. Tony sees them leave a unisex bathroom and smells the sex. He runs to a different bathroom in a different wing of the hospital and throws up.

With his throat burning, nose running, eyes watering, his thoughts wander to Bruce.  He vomits again, whole bodied and coughing, nothing left but bile and grief—for whom he isn’t sure. He swipes some medication off a nurse’s cart and pockets it. He’ll read the label and debate killing himself later, but now he’s got to look his mother in her sightless eyes and say goodbye, pray she’s there in the morning, as there as she can be, and won’t pass away while his father fucks his secretary and drinks too much whiskey and smacks Tony around.

He squeezes his mother’s hand, gets in the back of his father’s car—no seatbelt—and presses his forehead to the window, watching her room as they leave.

She’s gone in the morning, and Tony didn’t expect it to hurt this much. Even his faithless father is less stoic than usual, but he grabs Tony’s arm in stern warning when he can’t keep it together in public. Stark men don’t cry, and Tony’s not a boy anymore. He’s a motherless not-child. He’s a friendless not-child.

He reads through his father’s email when he gets the chance, sneaking into the study when his father is flat-faced drunk. Any hints of Bruce are hints of hope, but they’re all gone, or there are none to be found, so he locks himself in his room and counts all the slats of dark wood on the floor four times so he doesn’t cry. He paces, planting his feet between the panels as he counts, until he’s exhausted and collapses onto his bed. He cries then, flat-faced into his pillow and gasping. His mother is gone, his friend is gone, and he’s facing college at sixteen.

He stashes the pills under his mattress, and packs them three months later when he leaves for MIT. The label means nothing. Too much of anything is enough to kill him.

He prays for a single room, gets in the car, and doesn’t look back.

 

_Bruce_

He’s awake. He’s pained in his stomach and feet and bones, and awake and unsure where he is. He doesn’t know how he’s alive. He has needles taped to his arm and everything is cotton-soft. He blinks cognizance into his eyes, rubbing at the fog. The room is brilliant white and he’s behind glass. There’s a white man in a white coat with black hair, writing something on a clipboard chart. He tries to speak and it catches in his throat; a parched, twisted squeak is enough anyway. The man looks up and reaches over his shoulder. Bruce blinks. The man is wearing a walkie—he feels his stomach sink.

A few moments later, the man walks in, wearing a pleasant, trained smile. Up close, Bruce can see the scarring on his jaw and the discoloration of a spot in the white of his right eye.

“Bruce Banner?” He asks, though Bruce suspects they’ve already taken his blood, looked at his DNA, and found everything they could on him. He nods anyway.

“Where am I?” he asks, though he’s pretty sure every answer he manages to scrounge will be partial truth.

“You’re on a military base in New Mexico,” he says, holding out his hand, “I’m Colonel Nivens.”

Bruce looks at him skeptically, not reaching back, “Why?”

“Afraid I can’t tell you,” He says, “out of your rank.” He grabs Bruce’s hand anyway, turning it over and taking his pulse, “We’ll have a psychiatrist in shortly to do an eval for you. And then we’ll explain a little more deeply why you’re here, and what your options are. There aren’t many, and you’re likely to reject them all. I’m here to warn you that the General will not take kindly to refusal.”

Bruce stares at him, yanking his hand away as Nivens releases him, “So my options are comply, or…comply?”

Nivens smiles, and nods, “Essentially, you are considered a felon and a fugitive by the U.S. government. We either give you a pass and you work for us, doing exactly as we ask for as long as we say, or you don’t, and we make you disappear.”

Bruce swallows and nods, unable to answer around the heat and tension in his stomach. He almost vomits, but everything in him is empty.

Nivens pats his shoulder. He takes the clipboard from the end of Bruce’s bed and closes the door behind him as he leaves. As the door clicks closed, it beeps, and a red light on a small panel beside the right-hand side of the door blinks. He’s locked in. The realization cascades down on him—the room is entirely glass, probably reinforced. He is in the middle of the room. His bed is a foot off the floor, the IV’s are steel, and both of his ankles are shackled to the foot of the bed. It's a cage.

There’s no way he’s getting out of here; he was going to die, alone in New Mexico.

 


End file.
